Gonna give this ecomodder thing a shot, but I'll need your help!

[Badfish]

Hey everyone,
Just rescued my sister's neglected 99 Civic and am planning on turning into my commuter car. I commute roughly 50 miles every day and my current car averages about 21mpg so I'm in desperate need of something better. The Civic alone should be a huge step in the right direction, but my goal is low to mid 40's (which seems pretty easily obtainable?). It's a 2 door coupe with a 5 speed manual and a D16Y7 engine. With just a little work it'll be roadworthy again and then I'm going to look into doing some ecomods to it. I'm a BMW technician so I'll be doing all the work myself, also I'm leaning towards physical mods over driving profile changes. Any tips you guys have would be greatly appreciated. Not opposed to engine swaps/gear ratio changes/ECU tuning.
Thanks in advance, I look forward to being a part of the community.

Badfish

[nemo]

Originally Posted by Badfish

Hey everyone,
I'm leaning towards physical mods over driving profile changes.

Badfish

More will gained by adjusting the nut behind the wheel.

[Badfish]

Haha I know this, but the nut behind the wheel has been crossthreaded for a long time now... that's why I'm trying to be realistic with a 40-45 mpg goal using mods alone.

[nemo]

I like that, cross threaded. Take a look at the hypermiling tips, pick one or two to start with, see how it goes. What is your commute like, city, highway or a combination? Grill blocks are a favorite here especial up north. A lot of Honda people here, sure you will get plenty of input. And welcome.

[Badfish]

My commute is about 25 miles each way, with 22 of those miles being highway (pretty fortunate, I'm also going against most traffic so that's a bonus). I just picked up the car today, gotta do some basic maintenance first then I'm going to knuckle down and start reading. Just wanted to throw out an intro and get my foot in the door here, so to speak. Thanks!

[RedDevil]

On the highway speed (or better, lack of it) is everything. On my 22 mile commute edging the posted speed limits (mostly 120 km/h, partly 100 km/h) would give me less than 18 km/l (42 mpg) while staying below 95 km/h all the way yields 22 km/l (over 50 mpg) both estimated under reasonable conditions.

Next big thing is tire size and pressure. Go for smaller rims/higher tirewalls, narrow thread and maximal pressure. The Prius thread shows that 17" low sidewall wheels can cause a 20% loss in MPG compared to 15" high sidewall tires.
Use only top quality tires, they maintain grip under high pressure much better than cheap tires.

Change the lights you use the most for HID's and LEDs if you plan to use the car for longer than 50K miles. Not a big difference in MPG, but it does help nonetheless and might improve your car at the same time; more light using less power.
Every kWh you save would save almost a litre of fuel. Using petrol and a car engine and alternator to produce electricity is very inefficient.

I went a bit further; I changed the 5W boot light for a 7W 24xpowerLED grid stuck on the boot light glass. It produces over 10 times the amount of light and it projects it straight into the boot, while most of the original boot light got lost in its housing (no reflector...!) so I have over 20 times more light in my boot than before.
Same with the 8W entry light. Great fun - when I unlock my car with the remote key the interior lights up so brightly that it lights the surrounding area too, enough to see any obstacles and such.

[2000neon]

Hey, for a highway commute I definitely recommend a grill block, air dam, and tire spats, they can be done pretty easily, and are a great way to "get your feet wet" into ecomodding. All of the mods I just listed can be done as professionally, and stealthy as yoi desire. For the grill block, you can block from the backside of the grill, and paint the blocking material black, and it will basically be invisible. That's what I have done on my 94 Civic, no one has even noticed that it's blocked.

Side note: A cross thread, is a tight thread. As was mentioned though, the driver is a huge part in the fuel efficiency of the vehicle, and slowing down on the highway will have a significant effect.

[xecute]

You got my help.

I pavement engineer, with so much physical input from years of skid testing for public safety




I use a lot of Ford components in my engines which are Honda designed and made in the aftermath of Ford opting out of the Honda/Ford stratified charge four cylinder engines of the late 70's. Suddenly, Honda became the most amazing paid sub contractor to the world of economy, and its F1 work was even more helpfull.

Hondas "do more with less" philosophy has yielded a golden age of economy, and the rest of the economy ethos has come through from absolutely radical reverse engineering for the five parasitic losses of
1. frontal area,
2. aerodynamics,
3. rolling resistance due to tire type, width and load,
4. drive train loss
5. Vehicle weight and its impact on acceleration and efficency.

The management of the engine power by the nut behind the wheel brokers the enviromental and road load factors
6. environment (its pressure/air density, humidity and composition),
7. road load (due to
7a traffic density,
7b longitundinal/vertical grade interplay,
at varying phase lenghts and maganitues impact of
7c mega texuture [big aligments above 55 ft phase length],
7d macrotexture [55 ft to 1 ft horizontal aligments]
and
7e microtexture [the fine surface texture below 1 ft to the factor of friction measurent, differernt for gravel, sand, cement, asphalt, bitumen, tar seal macadams].
7f road strength makes an impact on road load too (basecourse and subgrade strength for flexiable and unyielding constructions).

This site majors on the human factor, and how you deal with the "Your Results May Vary" parts of the EPA/Euro fuel figures. And that's the even smarter than the very cutting edge way people here deal with making mpg by engineering changes.


I have been using a RoadWarriorDyno System basically as a partial low to high load drive-ablity test, which validates air fuel ratios, advance, knock under load, knock when using low grade gas.

The calculated road load table is based on the Coastal Otago and Milford Highway topo and gps plots I've collected over the years. (a sample of Coastal Otago below). Each crimson RS is a 10 mile 'mile marker', and the blue readings are where I've intensively surveyed the road over the past 10 years since the R~S data base was set up as a green engineering kadet waving his Garmin globalnav back in the early noughtees. Back then, I called it RS 2002i, and spent late nights linking everything by co-ordinate geometery.The yellow SN are special control sites for coastdown readings so I can determine overall road load.

I learned about the need to do this from the legandary Doug McMillan, who with the help of a road closure initated by a friendly official, drove a Honda VTEC CRX at 7 Mile Road, Oamaru, establishing 148.68 mph on 19 October 1997 with only 97 cubic inches, a class record. This was pivitol in me starting with a real world road load database. His figures in a magazine inspired me to do this. Him, and Burt Monroe..



See latest info at http://www.hondata.com/hondata_speed...s_release.html, and http://www.hondatuningmagazine.com/f...r/viewall.html

[xecute]

Originally Posted by Badfish

My commute is about 25 miles each way, with 22 of those miles being highway (pretty fortunate, I'm also going against most traffic so that's a bonus). I just picked up the car today, gotta do some basic maintenance first then I'm going to knuckle down and start reading. Just wanted to throw out an intro and get my foot in the door here, so to speak. Thanks!

How are you getting on?

I'm on the bones of my butt, still reeling from the cost of advertising, running and getting enough market share for my self funded business, and so not being able to afford all my mechanical mods just yet. I've got some help, but its very awkward.

My Rochester 2 jet carb mods, to improve fuel distribution and to be able to jet down the engine enough to run very lean in each cylinder, with good chamber filling, are still underway.

My running total fuel consumptions remains the typical 15 mpg I have been getting for the past 2 and a half years, similar to what they used to get in the 80's when these 3.3 liters were new.

http://i1215.photobucket.com/albums/...onsumption.jpg

[Beau]

Originally Posted by xecute

How are you getting on?

I'm on the bones of my butt, still reeling from the cost of advertising, running and getting enough market share for my self funded business, and so not being able to afford all my mechanical mods just yet. I've got some help, but its very awkward.

My Rochester 2 jet carb mods, to improve fuel distribution and to be able to jet down the engine enough to run very lean in each cylinder, with good chamber filling, are still underway.

My running total fuel consumptions remains the typical 15 mpg I have been getting for the past 2 and a half years, similar to what they used to get in the 80's when these 3.3 liters were new.

http://i1215.photobucket.com/albums/...onsumption.jpg

So, it seems as if we have another member from the Ford Inline Six Forum???

I'm "soldmy66" over there.

Welcome.